In many medical procedures, body fluids are recovered from a patient in order to be stored, processed and treated, or retransfused back to the body. Perhaps the most well known of procedures of this type involve the recovery of blood from a patient during surgical operations. The patient is coupled to a heart/lung machine which recovers blood from the patient by means of pumps associated with the machine and subsequently retransfuses the blood back to the patient. However, pumping machines of this type are generally expensive and subject the blood being collected to significant trauma during the pumping cycle. This is particularly critical when blood is the recovered fluid since the trauma generated in prior art systems which use either roller pumps or diaphragm pumps generate micro emboli which can affect the retransfused blood an cause harmful reactions in the patient. The trauma may also cause direct physical damage to a medical fluid, particularly blood.
At present, there is increased concern about the use of donor blood during surgical procedures because of the potential of contracting various diseases. Although in many instances donor blood is a necessity, the retransfusing of one's own blood offers a number of advantages. There is no need to match the donor with the patient, a problem which may arise in the case of an uncommon blood type. Perhaps more importantly there is a reduced risk of introducing potentially harmful substances into the blood. Autotransfused blood is also fresh and there is no cost associated with its storage and reprocessing as in the case of donor blood.
The recovery of body fluids is not limited to that of blood during surgical procedures. Other procedures include the suction irrigation of joints for infection, suction irrigation for dialysis (either peritoneal or extra corporeal), gastrointenstinal or urological fluid exchange, and suction recovery of cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) in hydrocephalus.